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Colombia Climate
The striking variety in temperature and precipitation
results
principally from differences in elevation. Temperatures
range from
very hot at sea level to relatively cold at higher
elevations but
vary little with the season. At Bogotá, for example, the
average
annual temperature is 15°C, and the difference between the
average
of the coldest and the warmest months is less than 1°C.
More
significant, however, is the daily variation in
temperature, from
5°C at night to 17°C during the day.
Colombians customarily describe their country in terms
of the
climatic zones: the area under 900 meters in elevation is
called
the hot zone (tierra caliente), elevations between
900 and
1,980 meters are the temperate zone (tierra
templada), and
elevations from 1,980 meters to about 3,500 meters
constitute the
cold zone (tierra fría). The upper limit of the
cold zone
marks the tree line and the approximate limit of human
habitation.
The treeless regions adjacent to the cold zone and
extending to
approximately 4,500 meters are high, bleak areas (usually
referred
to as the páramos), above which begins the area of
permanent
snow (nevado).
About 86 percent of the country's total area lies in
the hot
zone. Included in the hot zone and interrupting the
temperate area
of the Andean highlands are the long and narrow extension
of the
Magdalena Valley and a small extension in the Cauca
Valley.
Temperatures, depending on elevation, vary between 24°C
and 38°C,
and there are alternating dry and wet seasons
corresponding to
summer and winter, respectively. Breezes on the Caribbean
coast,
however, reduce both heat and precipitation.
Rainfall in the hot zone is heaviest in the Pacific
lowlands
and in parts of eastern Colombia, where rain is almost a
daily
occurrence and rain forests predominate. Precipitation
exceeds 760
centimeters annually in most of the Pacific lowlands,
making this
one of the wettest regions in the world; in eastern
Colombia, it
decreases from 635 centimeters in portions of the Andean
piedmont
to 254 centimeters eastward. Extensive areas of the
Caribbean
interior are permanently flooded, more because of poor
drainage
than because of the moderately heavy precipitation during
the rainy
season from May through October.
The temperate zone covers about 8 percent of the
country. This
zone includes the lower slopes of the Cordillera Oriental
and the
Cordillera Central and most of the intermontane valleys.
The
important cities of Medellín (1,487 meters) and Cali
(1,030 meters)
are located in this zone, where rainfall is moderate and
the mean
annual temperature varies between 19°C and 24°C, depending
on the
elevation. In the higher elevations of this zone, farmers
benefit
from two wet and two dry seasons each year; January
through March
and July through September are the dry seasons.
The cold or cool zone constitutes about 6 percent of
the total
area, including some of the most densely populated
plateaus and
terraces of the Colombian Andes; this zone supports about
onefourth of the country's total population. The mean
temperature
ranges between 10°C and 19°C, and
the wet seasons occur in
April
and May and from September to December, as in the high
elevations
of the temperate zone.
Precipitation is moderate to heavy in most parts of the
country; the heavier rainfall occurs in the low-lying hot
zone.
Considerable variations occur because of local conditions
that
affect wind currents, however, and areas on the leeward
side of the
Guajira Peninsula receive generally light rainfall; the
annual
rainfall of thirty-five centimeters recorded at the Uribia
station
there is the lowest in Colombia. Considerable year-to-year
variations have been recorded, and Colombia sometimes
experiences
droughts.
Colombia's geographic and climatic variations have
combined to
produce relatively well-defined "ethnocultural" groups
among
different regions of the country: the Costeño from the
Caribbean
coast; the Caucano in the Cauca region and the Pacific
coast; the
Antioqueño in Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, and Valle del
Cauca
departments; the Tolimense in Tolima and Huila
departments; the
Cundiboyacense in the interior departments of Cundinamarca
and
Boyacá in the Cordillera Oriental; the Santandereano in
Norte de
Santander and Santander departments; and the Llanero in
the eastern
plains. Each group had distinctive characteristics,
accents,
customs, social patterns, and forms of cultural adaptation
to
climate and topography that differentiates it from other
groups.
Even with rapid urbanization and modernization,
regionalism and
regional identification continued to be important
reference points,
although they were somewhat less prominent in the 1980s
than in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Data as of December 1988
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